Prescription charges for long-term conditions are unfair and out-of-date

Thanks to ever-increasing prescription costs for the essential medication people with long-term conditions need to keep them well, or even alive, many are facing the stark choice between food, clothing, bills or their prescriptions.

Those were the words of Ed Miliband in his speech on living standards last month. With austerity beginning to bite owing to deep cuts, rising inflation and stagnant wages, the reality of this phrase has rarely been so apparent.

But for those of working age living with long-term conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, asthma or crohn’s disease, the squeeze is even tighter and more suffocating.

Thanks to ever-increasing prescription costs for the essential medication people with long-term conditions need to keep them well, or even alive, many are facing the stark choice between food, clothing, bills or their prescriptions.

This situation has been worsened further still this month with the price of a prescription being increased by 20p to an eye-watering £7.85 per item.

It may not sound like much but this cumulative cost soon stacks up and can easily amount to hundreds of extra pounds a year for people unfortunate enough to be diagnosed and living with a long-term condition.

These are people that already pay their national insurance contributions and now suddenly and unexpectedly need help from the NHS only to find that popular NHS mantras of ‘free at the point of delivery’, ‘available to all’ and ‘based on clinical need rather than ability to pay’ do not apply to them.

Prescription charges today are eight times higher, in real terms, than they were 30 years ago. The latest rise is up from £7.65 last year and is in keeping with a tradition that has seen charges rise every year since 1979.

With Labour having recently taken its first few steps towards its 2015 election manifesto through the publication and subsequent consultation on its Challenge Paper, ‘21st Century NHS and social care: Delivering integration’, now is an opportune moment to remind Labour of the argument for introducing free prescriptions for people with long-term conditions.

The Prescription Charges Coalition – a group of 20 leading charities and organisations – has today published a new report, Paying the Price, which makes a powerful case for reform.

We surveyed almost 4,000 people with long-term conditions who are not exempt from prescription charges, and found that of those who paid for their prescriptions but did not have a Prescription Prepayment Certificate (a pre-pay card which provides free prescriptions for an up-front charge of around £100 a year) 35 per cent had not collected a prescription medicine from the pharmacy because of the cost.

Among these respondents, 72 per cent reported their health deteriorated as a result of failing to take medicine as prescribed, and of these, 40 per cent were forced to go back to their doctor and ten per cent ended up in hospital.

The fact that some people have been admitted to hospital as a result of the current prescription charging regime should particularly worry policymakers, as unplanned hospital admissions are generally regarded as a sign of failure.

Long-term conditions are also a key source of health inequalities. The government’s own analysis shows that they disproportionately hit poorer members of society.

And not only do people with long-term conditions have a lower quality of life overall, but a regional analysis of long-term conditions shows that average quality of life scores are worse in poorer areas.

Ed Miliband made a speech on the future of the NHS to the RSA in 2011 in which he said, “it is essential to tackl[e] the gross health inequalities we still face in Britain”.

If the party is serious about taking action then this is one area that demands attention.

It goes without saying that introducing a manifesto pledge to give people with long-term conditions free prescriptions would be in keeping with Labour’s NHS heritage.

The introduction of prescription charges in 1952 actually resulted in the resignation of Aneurin Bevan and other ministers because of beliefs that it undermined the principle of the NHS being free at the point of delivery on the basis of need rather than ability to pay.

The coalition argues that 80 per cent of prescriptions are dispensed at no charge, as prescriptions are free for those who are under 16 and over 60, have certain medical conditions or are in receipt of benefits.

While this is welcomed, it still leaves another kind of ‘squeezed middle’, including students and new graduates, those saving for a deposit on their first house, people looking to start a family and even those sending their own children to university.

The last Labour government, under Gordon Brown, acknowledged the strong case for removing prescription charges for people with long-term conditions and indeed pledged to remove them in 2008.

Despite asking professor Sir Ian Gilmore to undertake a review on how to implement his pledge, and the fact Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all decided to abolish prescription charges, the policy was sadly never implemented in England.

With Labour now in the process of renewing its thinking on health policy. we have good reason to hope this situation will change under a future Labour government.

Newsbot9

Pensions have been defined as welfare here for a long time. And welfare is not necessarily, of course, means-tested in the UK.

YOU are seeking not to pay pensions, and to default. This has nothing to do with the left. Thief, your robbery is extending to victim blaming now. You have to make everything about your hysterical resistance to pensions.

Newsbot9

Keep using your attack on anything apart from factory labourers. You keep up your myth that they “can’t” be paid, when you are trying to PREVENT them from being paid.

Your grasp of cause and effect is crap. And I evidently have more of both than you, fraudster.

Keep claiming that investing in education is an expense the state can’t afford…only true in your ideal world where the 99% slave in your factories. Keep doing all you can to distract from the topic at hand, by ranting against pensions as a concept.

LB

Yep you can get a high powered job if you study mejaah studies at Toxteth university for the reformed shop lifter. Sign here, take out all these debts and you will land a job running a national news paper.

Then they end up serving big macs, with or without fries, and tens of thousands of pounds of debt. That debt having gone into your pocket.

Newsbot9

That’s right, you keep talking up your plan to screw the students over, after forcing them into loans, to bar them from high-pay work. And keep trying to gloss over everything…”it’s all the same, it’s taught to the 99% – EVIIIILLL!!!”

Mick

There’s always help where possible, but mentioning that would spoil the Left’s bitchfest against David Cameron. I have asthma but would say the blamelies at the feet of PC morons who helped turn the NHS from streamlined emergency service to frivolous free-for-all.

Google DEBATE POLITICS £20 BILLION IN NHS CUTS WILL DOCTORS BE SACKED OR THE USELESS. And just look at what needs to be cut away to get some priority back.

soppygit

it’s ludicrous. It costs more to collect the prescription charge than it raises. This is something that the Scottish government have got right and Westminster should follow suit. The sums in question are trivia in relation to government spending.